World

Tokyo experienced its heaviest snowfall in four years this week and other parts of Japan will see sea-effect snow pile up through this week.

An area of low pressure tracked just south of Japan and brought heavy snowfall to the Tokyo area to start this week. This system has now pulled away from Honshu.

Dry and mostly sunny conditions developed Tuesday, but slippery travel remained a concern.

Chilly temperatures will be in place in the Tokyo area Thursday and Friday with highs just above freezing.

Tokyo picked up 23 centimeters, about 9 inches, of snowfall on Monday, making it the heaviest snowfall there since February 2014 when 27 centimeters, or 10.6 inches, was measured. That was also the last time a heavy snow warning was issued for the city.

 The heaviest snowfall fell late Monday afternoon into Monday night and impacted the evening commute.

Temperatures reached the upper 40s Fahrenheit, or almost 10 degrees Celsius, on Tuesday, allowing some of the snowfall to melt.

More Snow Ahead?

Locations near the Sea of Japan will continue to experience sea-effect snowfall over the next week. This sea-effect snowfall will be locally heavy at times and will likely result in feet of snow in many spots.

Sea-effect snowfall is similar to lake-effect snowfall. In this case, cold temperatures from Siberia spread toward Japan with northwesterly winds and the Sea of Japan is the moisture source. The higher elevations of the mountains near the coast of the Sea of Japan also enhance snowfall due to upslope flow.

Through Wednesday, 2 feet of snow is possible in the prefectures of Niigata and Toyama, while up to 30 inches may accumulate during this period in Ishikawa prefecture, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The chance of snow will continue into early next week, which will add to these snowfall totals.

Heavy snow and snow storm warnings have been issued for much of the coastal areas of Honshu near the Sea of Japan, from Ishikawa prefecture northward, through Wednesday. Portions of western Hokkaido are also under snow storm warnings until at least early Wednesday.

Japan's Sea of Japan side typically sees heavy snowfall in the winter, so this snowy forecast is not unusual.

But snow is more unusual in the Tokyo area due to its location closer to the Pacific Ocean and on the east side of the mountains, as well as its lower elevation. In fact, accumulating snow does not occur here every year.

The average annual snowfall for Tokyo is less than 2 inches. The most common time of the year for snow is January into February when average low temperatures are close to the freezing mark.

Source : weather.com

Haitians will no longer be eligible for U.S. visas given to low-skilled workers, the Trump administration said on Wednesday, bringing an end to a small-scale effort to employ Haitians in the United States after a catastrophic 2010 earthquake.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the change less than a week after President Donald Trump reportedly questioned in an Oval Office meeting why the United States would want to take in immigrants from Haiti and African nations, referring to them as “shithole” countries. Trump has denied using that word.

DHS said in a regulatory filing that it was removing Haiti from lists of more than 80 countries whose citizens can be granted H-2A and H-2B visas, given to seasonal workers in agriculture and other industries.

It cited what it said were “high levels of fraud and abuse” by Haitians with the visas, and a “high rate of overstaying the terms” of their visas.

A DHS report published last year stated that Haitians on a variety of non-immigrant visas, including H-2As and H-2Bs, had a roughly 40 percent visa overstay rate in the 2016 fiscal year.

Belize and Samoa were also removed from the lists, for risks stemming from human trafficking and not taking back nationals ordered removed from the United States, respectively.

Just a few dozen Haitians entered the United States on the visas each year since they were given permission to do so in 2012 by the Obama administration, according to DHS data.

Sixty-five Haitians entered the United States on H-2A visas, given for agricultural work, in the 2016 fiscal year, according to DHS data, and 54 Haitians were granted H-2A visas by the State Department between March and November 2017. The number of Haitians entering in 2016 on H-2B visas, which are for non-agricultural seasonal work, was more than zero but too low to report, according to DHS.

Supporters of the visas say they gave Haitians a rare opportunity to work legally in the United States, contribute to the U.S. economy, and help fund the recovery of Haiti after the earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people.

Demonstrators hold up Haitian flags and shout as the motorcade of U.S. President Donald Trump passes in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 15, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

“They’re just cutting off the most economically beneficial visa for the Haitian people,” said Sarah Williamson, founder of PTP Consulting, a Virginia-based consultancy that ran a pilot program to bring Haitians to the United States on the visas. “Even though not many people have been able to avail themselves of it, it’s been hugely transformational for those who have participated.”

The Haitian embassy in the United States did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Officials in Haiti were not immediately available for comment.

(Reuters)

Russian presidential candidate and former reality TV star Ksenia Sobchak has called for the legalization of marijuana, saying it was less dangerous for society than vodka.

Sobchak is running on an "against all" platform from the Civic Initiative Party in Russia’s presidential elections next March. She is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, the first democratically-elected mayor of St. Petersburg and a former mentor of President Vladimir Putin.

 At a meeting with supporters in Kaliningrad on Monday, Sobchak said that the legalization of marijuana could help solve "the narcotics epidemic" in Russia.

"I myself don't use it, but I don't drink vodka by the bottle, either," Lenta.ru reported her as saying, citing the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

"I don't really understand why drinking vodka in enormous quantities is considered normal in our country, but using marijuana is not, though it has far fewer consequences, even from the perspective of crime statistics," she added.

Andrei Khrapov, the chief of narcotics control at Russia’s Interior Ministry, said the government opposed such legalization and saw neither advantages nor medical benefits from drugs such as cannabis.

The world’s governments have spoken. Germany’s citizens are the travelers most welcome to cross their borders.

The Henley Passport Index, an annual ranking of passport power by the citizenship planning firm, came out today for 2018. Germany is at the top for the fifth year in a row, with visa-free or visa-upon-arrival access to 177 countries, up from 176 last year. (In February 2017, Belarus introduced a five-day visa-free visit available to citizens of 80 countries, including Germany.)

A separate ranking called Passport Index is published by the global financial advisory company Arton Capital, and is updated in real time. Last October, Passport Index briefly put Singapore at the top of the world’s power passports. According to its count, updated after Paraguay relaxed its visa requirements for Singapore, its citizens could access 159 countries with no application, meaning no visa would be required or a visa could be obtained upon arrival.

In December, Arton’s Passport Index put Germany back on top, consistent with Henley’s ranking.

For the most part, it has been a good year for travelers’ international access. Since last year, most countries have retained the same levels of access or gained some. Seven passports, though, lost visa-free access to one other country: Azerbaijan, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, Algeria, Laos, North Korea, and Syria, according to Henley. The Georgian passport gained the most access of any country, with new visa-free access to 32 countries, including those of the Schengen zone.

Here’s Henley’s top 10 for the year 2018:

And here are the countries with the least freedom of movement, according to Henley:

US President Donald Trump reportedly uses an accent to imitate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Senior administration officials told The Washington Post that Trump has been known to “affect an Indian accent” to quote Modi, who last year condemned U.S. activity in Afghanistan during a private meeting with Trump.

“Never has a country given so much away for so little in return,” Modi said at the time.

The U.S. Army is currently preparing to increase its presence in Afghanistan by as many as 1,000 more troops, according to the Post. Trump has already added at least 5,500 service members since taking office.
The Post's report about Trump using an accent to imitate Modi comes on the tails of his reported “shithole countries” remark during a private meeting with lawmakers to refer to immigration from Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations.

At an event honoring Native American Code Talkers in November, Trump referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as “Pocahontas,” which many consider to be a racial slur, to refer to her claimed Native American heritage.

U.S. President Donald Trump Sunday denied that he was a "racist," despite having pushed for tougher immigration policies.

"I'm not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you," Trump told reporters before a dinner with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Trump made the remark as the U.S. government is discussing the fate of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was introduced in 2012 to offer legal status to those foreigners who came to the United States as minors. Those enrolled in the program, about 800,000, are known as Dreamers.

Trump signed an executive order ending DACA, but last week a federal judge in California ruled that halting the program was unlawful and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services resumed accepting new applications on Saturday.

Trump has blamed the Democrats for refusing to negotiate a deal on DACA.

"We're ready, willing, and able to make a deal on DACA, but I don't think the Democrats want to make a deal. And the folks from DACA should know the Democrats are the ones that aren't going to make a deal," he said.

Source : Xinhua

At least 18 civilians have been killed in the Turkish military campaign against Syria's Kurdish-held Afrin enclave in northern Syria, a monitor group reported Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the deaths occurred in Afrin and surrounding villages, as Turkey started its offensive on Saturday by airstrikes and shelling and commenced its ground incursion on Sunday to drive out the Kurdish forces from border areas between Syria and Turkey.

Kurdish activists said 11 civilians, including six children and women, were killed and 16 others wounded on Sunday in Afrin by the Turkish fire.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, said four of its fighters were killed as well as 10 fighters of the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) since Saturday when the Turkish-backed forces attempted to storm several border villages of Afrin.

An official in the YPG, Mahmoud Bardakhan, declared on Sunday the beginning of a "revolutionary campaign against the Turkish enemy" and FSA, which is involved in the Turkish campaign against Afrin.

Kurdish activists said the Kurdish fighters took several FSA fighters as captives during the military showdown in Afrin.

Meanwhile, Kurdish activists said Intense battles raged between the YPG and the Turkish army on the outskirts of the Adama town in the countryside of Afrin after the attempt of the Turkish army to advance int the town.

For his part, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Sunday that the "Turkish aggression on Afrin cannot be separated from the Turkish policies undertaken since the first day of the Syrian crisis to support terrorism and the terrorist groups in Syria."

Earlier in the day, Ankara said it had begun the ground incursion into Afrin, a day after intense shelling and airstrikes that marked the beginning of the Turkish campaign against the Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged on Sunday that the military campaign in Afrin would be over in a "short time," describing the military campaign as a "national struggle."

Turkey's military operation in Afrin aims to deal a strong blow to the Kurdish fighters and weaken their growing influence in northern Syria near Turkey.

The operation came particularly after the Kurdish forces defeated the Islamic State in Syria's northern province of Raqqa, and when the U.S. is forming 30,000-strong border forces from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and other Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

Source : Xinhua

An oil tanker burning in the East China Sea for more than a week has finally sunk, Chinese media say. The Sanchi and a cargo ship collided 260 km (160 miles) off Shanghai on 6 January, with the tanker then drifting south-east towards Japan.

Iranian officials now say all 32 crew members - 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis - on the tanker are dead. The tanker was carrying 136,000 tonnes of ultra-light crude but Chinese officials say there is no major slick. China Central Television said that the Sanchi had gone down after "suddenly igniting" around noon (04:00 GMT).

Some 13 vessels and an Iranian commando unit had been taking part in the salvage operation, amid bad weather. A spokesman for the Iranian team, Mohammad Rastad, said there was no hope of finding any survivors. On Saturday, salvage workers had boarded the vessel and found the bodies of two crew members in a lifeboat.

Only one other body had been found during the week of salvage operations. The rescue workers retrieved the ship's black box but had to leave quickly because of the toxic smoke and high temperatures.

The Panama-flagged Sanchi was bringing the condensate from Iran to South Korea when the collision with the Hong Kong-registered freighter CF Crystal, carrying grain from the US, happened in the East China Sea. The crewmen of the Crystal were all rescued.

The cause of the collision is still not known. After the collision, the Sanchi drifted at about 2.2km/h (1.4mph), south-eastwards towards the Japanese island of Amami Oshima. Condensate is very different from the black crude that is often seen in oil spills. It is toxic, low in density and considerably more explosive than regular crude. Condensate creates products such as jet fuel, petrol, diesel and heating fuel.

Source : BBC

The Taliban’s bloody, 14-hour siege on a major hotel in Kabul ended on Sunday, after six assailants terrorized much of the city with explosions and gunfire.

 The exact number of casualties remained unclear, and the authorities said it might take days to determine the extent of the material damage. Najib Danish, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said that 14 foreigners and four Afghans had been killed in the attack, and that 10 others, including six members of the security forces, had been wounded. Local news outlets put the number of dead at 43.

 The siege capped a violent 24 hours across Afghanistan, where about 50 people were killed in four provinces as the 16-year war continues to spiral more violently, with no tangible signs of a resolution.

 A guest, Abdul Rauf, 48, said he had run through the halls of the hotel as an armed man was firing and had then taken cover in his room.

 “I don’t know if he was the police or a suicide attacker, but he was shooting,” he said by cellphone while hiding under the bed of his hotel room. “Two rooms were on fire and smoke came into my room. I couldn’t breathe until I broke a window with my chair.”

 The attack was the second in eight years at the 200-room Intercontinental Hotel, located on top of a hill. The Afghan carrier Kam Air said that six of its employees from Ukraine were killed, along with two from Venezuela.

 Source : The New York Times

The African group of ambassadors to the United Nations has demanded an apology from Donald Trump after the US president reportedly aimed a racist remark at some Caribbean nations and Africa.

Trump criticised immigration to his country from El Salvador, Haiti and the African continent, by calling the group "shithole countries" at a meeting with Congress members at the White House on Thursday, according to US media.

"The African Union mission to the UN is extremely appalled at, and strongly condemns the outrageous, racist and xenophobic remarks attributed to the US president as widely reported by the media," Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, Ghana's ambassador to the UN, said on Friday.

The group has demanded a retraction and apology from Trump.

According to US media reports, citing people with knowledge of the conversation, Trump asked during a conversation about immigration: "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?"

Trump suggested the US should instead focus its immigrant entry policy on countries such as Norway.

Source : Al Jazeera

The U.S. government is shutting down as from Saturday as lawmakers failed to reach a deal to fund the government against the background of fierce partisan political fights.

After the immigration reform and budget talks fell apart, the Senate on Friday failed to pass a stopgap spending bill that would fund the government through Feb. 16. The bill was already approved by the House of Representatives on Thursday.

The move forces the government to shut down as from Saturday as current spending measures expired on Friday midnight. The shutdown begins on the first anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration as president, a political blow to the Republican president.

Outlook uncertain

The initial impact of a shutdown may be muted, because most of the federal agencies are closed on the weekend.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director (OMB) Mick Mulvaney said at a press briefing on Friday that government employees, including those dealing with public safety and national security, will keep working but without pay.

After the Senate failed to pass the four-week short-term spending bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed to vote on a three-week bill that would fund the government through Feb. 8 in order to halt the shutdown.

It is still uncertain whether the proposal could draw enough votes to help the government resume operations.

The last government shutdown occurred in 2013 when Republican lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to defund the Affordable Care Act. It lasted more than two weeks and led to more than 800,000 government employees receiving temporary unpaid leave.

Economic impact likely limited

"Partial federal government shutdowns have occurred in the past and this shutdown does not have a direct impact on the sovereign's 'AAA' /Stable rating," Fitch said in a statement on Friday.

As one of the top three world ratings agencies, Fitch said that if the the stabilization of the U.S. budget policy making and the brinkmanship continue over the federal debt limit debate in February, it could hurt the country's sovereign creditworthiness.

According to estimates by Goldman Sachs, each week of the shutdown would reduce gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first quarter by 0.2 percentage point, while shutdowns tend to have modest effects on financial markets, as experience shows.

"With the debt limit deadline farther away, we would expect a muted initial reaction in financial markets to a shutdown," said Goldman Sachs.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, told local media that the good news is that business and consumer confidence is much stronger today than it was during the 2013 shutdown, but he pointed out that there could be less confidence due to the shutdown.

The economist also warned that if the lawmakers and the White House continue to play brinkmanship with the debt limit, the economy would face a problem.

Source : Xinhua

President Donald Trump expressed frustration behind closed doors with people coming to the US from "shithole countries," sources told CNN on Thursday.

One of the sources briefed on the Thursday Oval Office meeting with lawmakers confirmed Trump asked, "Why do we want all these people from 'shithole countries' coming here?"

US President Donald Trump calls Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as “shithole countries”.

A person familiar with the meeting said Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham brought a plan to Trump that involved cutting the visa lottery in half and, at the behest of the Congressional Black Caucus, the rest would go to underrepresented countries in Africa and Temporary Protective Status nations, including Haiti. The person said the language was salty on both sides.

One person briefed on the meeting said when Durbin got to Haiti, Trump began to ask why we want people from Haiti and more Africans in the US and added that the US should get more people from countries like Norway.

A person familiar with what was said at the meeting told CNN that Trump also said: "Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out."

Trump was taping a message in the State Dining Room on Thursday afternoon for Martin Luther King Jr. Day as the story was breaking, an official said. Another official said Trump expressed to aides within the hour that the media was blowing his comment out of proportion.

The Washington Post first reported on Trump's comments in the Oval Office meeting, which the Post said "shocked" lawmakers in attendance.

Reached for comment about the article, White House spokesperson Raj Shah did not deny the "shithole" remark, but instead said in a statement that Trump "is fighting for permanent solutions that make our country stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation."

(CNN)